


i want to tell you

by Kit_Kat21



Series: Beatles Tribute [3]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Easter, Easter Egg Hunt, F/M, Light Angst, Past Relationship(s), Single Parent Sansa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-19
Updated: 2018-03-19
Packaged: 2019-04-04 12:09:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14019927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kit_Kat21/pseuds/Kit_Kat21
Summary: She hates how good he looks. He’s wearing those stupid dark, tight jeans of his and his stupid black sweater and his stupid curls are down that morning and everything about him is so stupid and she hates him. She really hates him.(And why does she always have to remind herself of that all of the time?)





	i want to tell you

…

 

Sansa had known her parents would go overboard – they always go overboard when it comes to Brandon and holidays – but this is a bit too much, even for Ned and Catelyn Stark.

 

She and Brandon have just woken up a few minutes ago and after Sansa goes to the bathroom herself and washed her hands, face and brushes her teeth, she then hurries back into her bedroom where Brandon is standing up in his crib, waiting for her.

 

“Happy Easter, sweetling,” Sansa smiles at him, hefting him out of the crib and into her arms, giving him a kiss on his cheek.

 

Brandon giggles and smacks a kiss on her cheek in return.

 

She changes his diaper, disposing the diaper into the diaper genie that Robb had gifted her with at her baby shower, and then tugs fresh pajamas onto him. Brandon insists on walking everywhere – now that he has gotten the hang of it and isn’t falling on his bottom nearly as much – and when they leave the bedroom, Sansa holds his hand as he walks beside her, she watching him with a smile because his legs just seem so unsteady, but each step he takes, he miraculously stays up and the pride in Sansa is warm in her chest.

 

At the top of the stairs, she swoops him up in her arms to carry him down. They are still working on stairs and it can take them forever to go down the entire long flight in her parents’ home, but Sansa can already smell breakfast being cooked in the kitchen and Sansa doesn’t want to make her family wait on breakfast as Brandon slowly and carefully gets downstairs.

 

“Good morning!” Ned booms when Sansa enters the kitchen.

 

“Happy Easter!” Catelyn beams right behind him.

 

“Hi!” Brandon exclaims to everyone and everyone beams in return.

 

Ned takes his grandson from Sansa’s arms into his and Sansa goes to help her mother finish with putting the final touches on the traditional large breakfast Catelyn makes each year for Easter. That evening, there will be another feast of ham, maple-glazed carrots, pastry wrapped asparagus, deviled eggs, a snap-pea and mushroom salad and coconut cake for dessert. It is the same meal Catelyn makes every year for Easter and Sansa will spend most of her day in the kitchen, helping her.

 

Breakfast on Easter in the Stark house is a tradition as well. Bacon and cheese quiche, round lamb sausages, oven-roasted Russet potato cubes and hot cross buns with dried cherries.

 

Catelyn loves being in the kitchen and she loves cooking food for her family. It’s honestly one of the things that makes her truly happy in life and she knows that with her husband’s position in the North, they are more than in a comfortable place in their life to be able to hire a cook, but Catelyn has never even imagined doing that for even a moment.

 

And ever since she was old enough to, Sansa has always helped Catelyn in the kitchen on holidays. She has always loved to cook and bake and like her mother, Sansa loves seeing the faces and smiles of her family when they eat something she has prepared and truly enjoy it.

 

There had been a time when she had moved away and lived with Ramsay where she didn’t cook; always fearful that if she did cook something and Ramsay didn’t like it, he would make the punishment too severe. He already beat her for the smallest mistake. Sansa hadn’t wanted to cook or bake something because she knew Ramsay would have hated it no matter what it was and she did everything she could do to avoid setting him off.

 

Since coming home to Wintertown and living with her parents once again, Sansa has returned to the kitchen, helping Catelyn as much as she can. With a toddler running all over, her attention is often distracted and more than one pot of water has boiled over and more than one pan of chicken has gotten a bit _too_ crispy in the oven, but Catelyn just laughs and Brandon gives a mischievous giggle and Sansa smiles because no one is slapping her for her mistakes.

 

This morning, Sansa helps Catelyn and Ned carries Brandon over to the kitchen table, setting the boy down in his high chair and then putting on a pair of rabbit ears on his head. Sansa smiles as Brandon begins laughing as if that is the best thing to ever happen to him.

 

The back door opens just as Sansa helps Catelyn pull the two quiches from the oven.

 

“It’s all set!” Arya announces to anyone and everyone.

 

“How many?” Ned asks.

 

“Fifty,” Rickon answers.

 

“Fifty?” Sansa spins around at that answer. “Seriously?”

 

Arya shrugs and takes another pair of rabbit ears, putting them on her head and then pulling a face at her nephew, Brandon laughing with delight and clapping his hands.

 

Sansa then looks to her dad. “Fifty?” She repeats.

 

“We have a big back yard,” Ned then shrugs. “And you know Robb will want to find some.”

 

“Sansa, dear, can you bring that potholder to the table?” Catelyn asks before Sansa can say anything in response to her dad’s comment.

 

Brandon is two and this is the first Easter that he can truly be engaged. This is the first Easter where he can go out into the backyard and engage in the egg hunt and she knew that her parents would, of course, want the egg hunt to be absolutely memorable for Brandon’s first, but honestly, fifty eggs for a two-year-old? That’s _slightly_ ridiculous.

 

“Arya, get the orange juice and Rickon, please bring the ketchup for your father. Ned, phone!” Catelyn directs them all as she and Sansa place the final food dishes onto the table and everyone else follows Catelyn’s instructions.

 

“It’s Bran!” Ned calls out, holding out the phone.

 

“Hi, Bran!” “Happy Easter, dear!” The rest of the family calls out.

 

Bran will be unable to join them this year for Easter – having to be in Tarth for work – and Ned and Catelyn both smile because Bran is a good boy and knows to call them first thing on Easter morning.

 

Sansa sits down in the chair next to Brandon’s high chair, fastening his bib around his neck and then adjusting his rabbit ears, Brandon giggling and Sansa smiling. He lifts his hands and Sansa takes them, kissing his little fingers.

 

“Would you like a sausage?” Sansa asks him as she takes his small plastic plate and gives him a small serving of the potatoes as well as one of the sausage rounds.

 

“We’re here!” Robb calls out from the front hallway.

 

Sansa doesn’t even lift her head as she focuses on cutting the sausage for Brandon. She knows who “we” are and it’s best as if she goes about, acting as if he doesn’t even exist to her. And he doesn’t. He did, once upon a time, but that was so long, Sansa tells herself that she hardly even remembers it anymore (though she has to remind herself of that more than she would like).

 

She feels the familiar prick on the back of her neck she always gets when he’s nearby, but she still looks at nothing except Brandon. She knows he comes for Easter breakfast. Thankfully, he doesn’t stay for the day. After a few hours, he’ll go to spend the rest of the day with his mother and his stepfather. Sansa is already counting the time until he leaves again.

 

“Uncle Robb!” Brandon exclaims. “Jon!”

 

“Happy Easter!” Robb smiles broadly and comes to kiss both Brandon and Sansa on their heads. “Perfect timing, I see,” he says when he sees the breakfast spread on the table.

 

Sansa can hear Jon – he is standing near the kitchen island, speaking with Arya; or rather Arya is talking and Jon occasionally gives a reply. In her seat, Sansa keeps her back to the rest of the kitchen, focusing on Brandon as he eats his sausage bites, giving her the occasional smile that Sansa always returns because nothing – _nothing_ – makes her happier than her son.

 

The rest of the family sits down at the table then to begin enjoying their Easter breakfast and Sansa keeps her head down as she eats, even though Jon is sitting down at the opposite end of the table by her dad, or she keeps her head turned towards Brandon.

 

Nothing else holds her attention – nor should it. She and Jon are in the past and are nothing anymore. She mattered so little to him years earlier and now, he matters even less to her now.

 

“Best breakfast yet, mom,” Robb smiles, putting down his fork and knife onto his empty plate.

 

Catelyn smiles, pleased, her cheeks pink as everyone echoes the sentiment. “Sansa helped.”

 

“You did most of it,” Sansa smiles at her mom. “But I promise to help with everything for dinner. I’m sure this little one will be in a sugar coma after all of those eggs outside and I’ll be able to concentrate on not burning the pastries.”

 

“Speaking of sugar,” Robb cuts in. “How many eggs? Plenty for me and Rickon as well?”

 

“Don’t you think of yourself as a little too old for the Easter egg hunt?” Arya asks with a raised eyebrow and slight smirk across her face.

 

“I think we all know that I don’t think much of myself at all,” Robb replies with a grin.

 

“How about this?” Ned suggests. “We get our coats, we’ll leave breakfast here for a moment, we go find some eggs and then we’ll come in and clean up then, yes?”

 

Everyone agrees to the plan – even Catelyn despite eyeing the breakfast plates and dishes spread across the table longingly – and Sansa hefts Brandon from his high chair, wiping at his face with his bib.

 

“You ready to hunt some eggs, sweetling?” Sansa asks him with a smile.

 

“Yes!” Brandon exclaims and she laughs.

 

She makes sure that he is bundled warmly before bundling herself up as well and her mom is already snapping pictures as they all pour out the backdoor into the backyard. Sansa can already seem a few of the plastic, multi-colored eggs dotting the landscape, but she can only see a few. Certainly not fifty. She hopes that Arya and Rickon haven’t been too hard in hiding.

 

Sansa crouches down next to Brandon. “The Easter Bunny has visited us and he has left his eggs behind. Shall we go find them?” She asks.

 

“Yes!” Brandon exclaims again and Arya hands him a plastic bucket.

 

“Get to it, Little Stark,” Arya grins down at her nephew.

 

And no sooner are his fingers closed around the bucket’s handle does he take off, Ned following behind with his phone, recording the whole thing, and Arya following them both.

 

Sansa stands on the edge of the deck, watching and smiling, laughing occasionally as she watches the pure joy exuding from her son right now as he finds his first egg, exclaiming over it and holding it up for his grandpa to see. She laughs as Robb and Rickon rush into the yard as well, wanting to get their own eggs.

 

“Mama!” Brandon exclaims from the back of the yard and he holds a green plastic egg up.

 

Sansa laughs and claps her hand. “Good job, Brandon!” She calls back to him.

 

Catelyn smiles, putting an arm around Sansa’s shoulders, and she kisses her head. “He is just like his uncles,” she says.

 

“Oh, no,” Sansa pretends to groan at the thought.

 

“Mama!” Brandon calls out to her, this time holding up a yellow egg.

 

“I see, sweetling!” Sansa calls back to him, clapping for him again.

 

“Rickon! Robb!” Catelyn suddenly exclaims. “Do not throw the eggs at each other.”

 

She kisses Sansa’s head once more before going off to stop her two sons who, in her opinion, are far too old to be acting as mischievous as their young nephew can.

 

“Mama!” Brandon is holding a blue egg up now and Sansa laughs, clapping her hands.

 

“Sansa.”

 

Sansa instantly stiffens at the sound of his voice, so close to her. She hadn’t been keeping track of his whereabouts and now, he’s right beside her. She swallows thickly and despite telling herself to just ignore him, she finds herself turning towards him.

 

She hates how good he looks. He’s wearing those stupid dark, tight jeans of his and his stupid black sweater and his stupid curls are down that morning and everything about him is so stupid and she hates him. She really hates him.

 

(And why does she always have to remind herself of that all of the time?)

 

She turns and looks at him, but she doesn’t say anything. She can’t imagine what he would have to say to her that he would actually approach her while her family is around. Doesn’t he care what they think about him speaking to her? That is a rhetorical question. Of course, he cares. Her family and what they think are the only things Jon Snow cares about.

 

Jon stares at her. He opens his mouth, but he still doesn’t say anything and he keeps looking at her with that intensity in his eyes that always made her shiver, but now, it just makes her entire body stiffen. His mouth closes, but then just a second later, his lips part again. He looks like a fish caught on a line, gasping for water, and he seems unable to get a single word out of him. She keeps waiting though for him to speak and she definitely hates herself for waiting.

 

She’s always waiting for Jon Snow in one way or another.

 

“Mama!” Brandon shouts.

 

Sansa begins to turn away from Jon to put her attention back on her son.

 

“Happy Easter, Sansa,” Jon says to her quietly and Sansa pauses for just a moment – almost as if she is going to respond to him though she has no desire to ever respond to him – before she steps away from him completely, heading off of the deck to go to Brandon because her son is holding up another egg and he’s so happy to see her coming towards him.

 

Honestly, as long as Brandon is always happy to see her, she doesn’t need anything more than that.

 

…


End file.
